240 TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 



inch long, and it constructs its nest on the lower surfaces of palm 

 leaves. The nest does not occupy much space, and the breadth of 

 one leaf suffices. There is only one oval-shaped comb in the nest, 

 and it is clothed in an envelope made of a rather fragile reddish- 

 coloured paper, in which there is a small inferior aperture. The 

 size of the cells of this comb is very minute, and does not reach 

 to more than from the twenty-fifth to the twelfth of an inch. The 

 regularity and the perfection of the construction of the cells are 

 very wonderful, but the insects build so well, that although the 

 palm leaves move with the wind, and sometimes very strongly 

 so, the larvai are all safe within the delicate little nest. 



Some foreign species of wasps belonging to the genus Char- 

 tcrgns, make their nests of a substance like pasteboard ; hence 

 they are called Pasteboard Wasps, The nest of Cliartcrgus nidu- 

 lans, a native of Brazil, has a beautifully 'polished white appear- 

 ance, and is so solid as to be impenetrable to the weather. 

 Reaumur showed some of the substances of which these nests are 

 composed to a cardboard manufacturer, who declared it to be 

 most likely the produce of a particular manufactory at Orleans, 



Another wasp, a native of Brazil, which is a honey-making 

 insect, is said to form its nest out of very different materials, for 

 it collects the dried dung of a species of tapir, and moulds it into 

 a rough sort of paper, 



A black wasp, which has smoky-coloured wings and a very 

 large head, lives in Guiana, and is called the Armadillo Wasp 

 {Tatua morid). Its nest is perhaps one of the most wonderful 

 examples of intelligent design in insects that can be put forward. 

 These wasps choose the straight and upright branches of a tree 

 which has no lateral twigs, and they make it the axis or the 

 support of the nest. The combs, which are composed only of a 

 few cells, are fixed to the branch by means of a very solid mass of 

 wax. They are separated by a considerable interval, are placed 

 one over the other, and sometimes there are ten of them. In the 

 accompanying engraving their numbers and mutual relations are 

 very well shown. The walls of the nest are formed by a fusi- 

 form envelope, made up of a woody paper, and marked with 

 transverse tubings, which are, as it were, goft'ered. Moreover, this 

 paper, the fibres of which are arranged with wonderful regularity,- 



